Kwame Nkrumah

Kwame Nkrumah (21 September 1909-27 April 1972) was Prime Minister of the Gold Coast (Ghana from 1957) from 21 March 1952 to 1 July 1960, and President of Ghana from 1 July 1960 to 25 February 1966, preceding Joseph Arthur Ankrah. He was the founder of the Convention People's Party and a founding member of the Organization of African Unity.

Biography
Kwame Nkrumah was born in Nkroful, Gold Coast in 1909. He studiedat Lincoln University and the University of Pennsylvania in the United States, and at the University of London and the London School of Economics in the United Kingdom. In Britain, he became active in the West African Students' Union and met several Black African leaders campaigning for independence and a pan-African movement. As a result, he was invited to return to lead the Gold Coast's first political party founded by J.B. Danquah, the United Gold Coast Convention, in 1947. On 12 June 1949 he founded the more radical Convention People's Party, which called for passive resistance and strikes to force independence from British colonial rule.

Prime Minister of Ghana
Despite his being imprisoned in 1950, the CPP won the 1951 elections to the Legislative Assembly, whereupon he was released and became Prime Minister. After the country achieved independence as Ghana, he established a one-party dictatorship, declared himself president for life in 1962, but was overthrown in 1966. As the first Black African to lead his country to independence from British rule, he inspired a generation of Black African leaders. He actively encouraged other African independence movements through his visits abroad and his writings. He lived the rest of his life in Guinea, of which he was named honorary co-president, and he died in Bucharest, Romania in 1972 at the age of 62.